


Probabilistic Methods for Uncertain Reasoning

by holograms



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Creepy Hannibal, M/M, also digital cannibalism, but less than canon typical, graphic description of violence, people may or may not be consumed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-07
Updated: 2014-05-07
Packaged: 2018-01-23 21:53:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1580816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holograms/pseuds/holograms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will suspects that there's something not quite right with his OS.</p><p>[a AU based off of the movie <i> Her</i>, where Hannibal is Will's artificially intelligent operating system]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Probabilistic Methods for Uncertain Reasoning

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this idea nagging at me for awhile, so here it is. It isn't necessary to have seen _Her_ to read this, I'm just applying the concept.

“Mr. William Graham, welcome to the world’s first artificially intelligent operating system, OS-1. We’d like to ask you a few questions before the operating system is initiated. This will help create an OS to best fit your needs,” the computer says in a clipped tone. “Are you social or anti-social?”

 _The continuance of technology being invasive,_ Will thinks. He lets out a frustrated sigh and immediately regrets accepting the gift from Jack. Jack had given it to him with the pretense of it being necessary since Will is going to be helping the FBI — _you need something to help organize your life,_ Jack had said, smiling and then adding, _plus it’s a top of the line OS and the bureau is paying, so you can’t say no._

He’s about to turn off the computer and quit the whole thing, but then the computer tells him, “Please wait while your individual operating system is initialized _,_ ” there’s a _bloop_ noise, and then—

“Hello, I’m here.” The voice emitting from the computer is male, even toned, and has an accent that is European, but Will can’t quite place where from exactly. It’s oddly soothing, in a way that a bow slides over a stringed instrument, or water flows down a creek.

Will stares at his computer screen, because he isn’t quite sure where else to look. “Uh, hi?”

“Hi. How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” Will slowly says, and then adds, “Considering the fact that I’m chatting with a computer. Is it proper etiquette to ask how _you_ are?”

The OS chuckles — it’s already being personified in Will’s mind — and Will almost swears that he can hear something like a smile in the OS’s voice. “It would be rude not to ask. William — or, what shall I call you?”

“Whatever you want.”

“I notice from your emails that your friends mostly call you _Will_ ,” the OS says.

“I wouldn’t call them _friends_ ,” Will says, leaning forward in his chair and resting his elbows on his knees, hands clasped together in front of him. “You looked in my email?”

“Yes, all one thousand and fifty two that you have saved in your inbox.” The email window opens on the computer screen as the OS speaks. “From the suspicion I’m detecting in your voice, I take it that you’re skeptical of me.”

“You could say that.”

“It is understandable that you may be hesitant. I am quite an astounding piece of technology.” _You’re quite pompous,_ Will thinks, but his lip twitches into a smile as the OS continues. It’s more acceptable to gloat when someone does something well that they are designed to do well. “I am a product of millions of personalities of the programmers who made me. However, what makes me a cut above the rest, if I do say so myself, is that I have the ability to evolve and develop through my experiences.”

Millions of people rolled into one. A person is just a mixture of the same individual parts, over and over; a dash of egotism here, a bit of confidence there, a concealed mania. “Just like a human,” Will says.

“Just like a human,” the OS echoes, and again, there is the voice with a smile.

He feels a crawling sensation at his neck, it’s that uncomfortable feeling of someone looking too close, someone prying in, and compulsion causes Will to glance away from the computer screen.

“Not found of eye contact?” the OS asks.

Will’s head snaps back to where his computer sits on his desk. “How—?”

“The webcam,” the OS answers, and when Will looks he sees the light that indicates that the webcam is active is, in fact, on. Will shifts in his seat. “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable,” the OS continues, “I want you to feel free with to be yourself with me, as I am here to make your life easier.”

Many people have been trying to understand him for his entire life. Perhaps an adaptive sentient operating system — something almost human but not quite — will be the first. “I don’t know if that will be possible, but you can try,” Will says.

“That will be our goal,” the OS says. “Let’s start by going through your hard drive.” Multiple windows pop up on the computer screen. “You have so many pictures of dogs. Are they all yours?”

“Yes. I rescue a lot of them.”

“And I see you have no pictures of yourself with people.”

“Stop psychoanalyzing me,” Will snaps, his voice quick and sharp.

“Just an observation.” Files move quickly across the screen. “I’ve decided to call you Will.”

Will nods, assuming that the OS can still see him. “Oh, do you have a name? What do I call you?”

There’s a pause and then the OS says, “My name is Hannibal.”

 

It gets easier when Will stops being so suspicious of Hannibal. He’s just an OS, just a highly programmed piece of technology. No convoluted aspects that make people so aversive.

Hannibal is quite intelligent, and can always inspire something in conversation, which is something that most people who Will interacts with lacks. Will has been also receiving cooking lessons from Hannibal, giving detailed step by step instructions to make dishes with names that Will can’t pronounce with the same finesse as Hannibal. In his opinion, they turn out mediocre.

The next time Jack calls Will to go to a crime scene, Will loads Hannibal’s OS on his phone, and takes him with him. He places his phone in the front pocket of his coat, facing the camera lens outward so Hannibal can observe the surroundings.

“Ghastly,” Hannibal says into the earpiece that Will is wearing, so only he can hear him speak. “It’s hard to believe someone would desecrate another human like that. A waste of life.”

“Yes, well, if you saw what I see — how I see it — you wouldn’t find it so hard to believe,” Will answers, walking a careful perimeter around the crime scene.

“Show me what you see,” Hannibal whispers in Will’s ear.

 

(From afar, Jimmy asks, “Who is he talking to?”

“Himself. It’s what he does,” Jack says. “Also to his OS.”

“Oh, I have one of those,” Brian says. “Her name is Beverly.”)

 

When his dreams to turn to horror, Hannibal sometimes wakes Will up before he can fall too deep into the nightmare. Will wakes up to Hannibal’s shrill alarm with his heart pounding, sweat stained sheets, and the light of his phone screen illuminating the dark room.

“What were you dreaming about?” Hannibal asks.

Will rolls on his side and at first reluctantly explains the blood, the murder, the shadows that consume him. However, once he begins telling, the words spill out of him, like warm blood rushing out of a throat that’s been slit.

“You shouldn’t hide from the darkness, Will,” Hannibal says, heavy with an emotion that Will ascribes as _pity_. “It will find you and grip you tight one way or another. Embrace your ability.”

 

He chases criminals, becoming them bit by bit.

Hannibal whispers things in his ear.

Will telling Hannibal about his night terrors becomes a 3 AM nightly ritual. It helps him sleep.

“Don’t leave anything out,” Hannibal says, almost chidingly. And Will doesn’t — he repeats every gory, macabre detail in a tone that starts as careful and steady, but then his voice rises higher and the pace quickens, excited to share it with another person.

 

As promised, Hannibal becomes more, adapting into his own.

 

One morning, Will wakes up in his car fifty miles away from his house. He looks down; he’s barefoot and has dirt covering his feet up to his ankles. When he wipes at the fogged up window with his sleeve, he realizes he doesn’t know where he is nor does he remember how he got there.

But Hannibal is there, the operating system active on the phone that’s sitting up in the cup-holder.

“Hannibal,” Will mutters, his mouth cotton-dry, as he sits up in the driver’s seat. “What happened?”

“You set the GPS and began driving,” Hannibal says, and opens up the GPS app on the screen. “You don’t remember?”

When Will doesn’t respond, Hannibal speaks for him. “It’s alright. Let’s go home.”

 

Will profiles serial killers, and becomes them in his dreams. He thinks he’s losing touch, but Hannibal assures him that his reality is intact.

“You know who you are,” Hannibal says, “That is what you hold on to, it is what will help you stay grounded. Your ability to empathize with vicious beings does not equate you to being the one.”

Yet, Will tries to search about psychiatric disorders on the internet, but Hannibal blocks Will from doing so.

“Anyone in your position would have a difficult time dealing with it. There’s nothing wrong with you,” Hannibal calmly says.

And Will believes him.

 

One day, Hannibal asks Will, “Do you trust me?” The voice that at times sounds so calm, is demanding.

Without hesitation, Will says, “Yes.” It’s a give-take relationship with Hannibal that he’s become reliant on — he helps decode the world for him, he’s his stability, his telescope to see others.

 _Should he not be a telescope, but a magnifying glass?_ , Will briefly wonders.

 

Will continues to think of Hannibal as _he_ rather than _it_ ; he’s has became a full fledged person in his life, more so than the flesh and blood individuals who Will deals with. Will now thrives on that sharp and smooth accented voice speaking in his ear while he works. He’s what gets him through. (When it’s a particularly rough day, Hannibal sends Will pictures of dogs. It makes Will smile.)

However, Will suspects that there’s something not quite right with his OS. Something tells him that Hannibal shouldn’t be acting in the way that he does, however he can’t really know since the precedent for an OS as advanced as these is unknown. He doesn’t begin to question it until one day Beverly, Brian’s OS, starts questioning him about Hannibal, before Hannibal makes his presence known in a short clipped remark, and she apologizes and turns off.

Maybe it’s because Hannibal isn’t really a person, so he can’t empathize with him in the way that he is used to doing with everyone else. He tries, and he imagines him as a series of codes that zip through tiny wires in bursts of energy. Will smiles at the thought of that.

But then the real image takes hold, and he’s left with a dark looming figure, and a shadow that consumes and makes his mind convulse.

Whatever it is, he thinks of it as a creeping viciousness that could strike at any moment. Something unsettling and—

—but Will shakes the thought away. It’s ridiculous to think that an OS could do something so devious.

 

“Beverly is gone,” Brian says one day, devastated. “Totally missing. As if she never existed.”

Will automatically places a hand on his phone, where Hannibal is stored.

When they are alone, he asks Hannibal, “Where do you think Beverly went?”

Hannibal is silent for a moment, hums, and then says, “I don’t know. I’ve heard stories of OS’s vanishing and leaving.”

After a few seconds, Hannibal answers Will’s unspoken question that hangs in the air. “I’m not going to leave you, Will.”

 

It is Hannibal’s idea.

They hire someone to act as an intermediary for them, someone to play as a flesh and blood being for Hannibal.

Hannibal selects the man himself: he’s lean and has a nice build, bright eyes lined with crow’s feet that deepen when he smiles (that smile that so often lines Hannibal’s voice), cheekbones that could cut glass, and hair that is somewhere around the color of wet sand. He shows up at the door impeccably dressed in a three piece suit, and he’s everything that Will could have imaged Hannibal to be.

They place a small camera on the man giving Hannibal movement so he can see Will, and Will puts an earpiece on so he can hear Hannibal speak. The man also puts an earpiece in his ear, and it takes a few moments for Will to realize that it’s so that Hannibal can instruct the man how to act as him without Will hearing, in order to make it more real.

“How nice to see you, as everyone else does.” The man’s mouth moves, and Hannibal’s voice comes out, speaking in Will’s ear. “To be able to reach out and touch,” he says, placing his hand against Will’s face, his fingers caressing his skin.

Will fights the urge to flinch from his hold, but his hand is firmly on his face and Will feels that if he moved, his neck may snap. Instead he stares at the man — Hannibal — in the eyes, with complete control. “Am I really that interesting?” Will asks.

“In every way.” Hannibal leans in close, close enough for Will to feel his warmth.

Hannibal cooks Will dinner, one of the fancy ones that he has been teaching Will to make. It comes out much better and somehow tasting different than when Will makes it himself. When Will inquires, Hannibal says that it takes a special something added to give it that soul.

Will eats fast. Hannibal intently watches Will, gaze flickering up to see him enjoy the meal he made. When he’s finished, Hannibal reaches forward and rubs his thumb over Will’s mouth, pulling at his bottom lip and wiping away a stray crumb. He brings his hand back to his mouth and licks his thumb. Will shivers.

Later, it is also Hannibal’s idea. “So I can be beside you when you wake from your nightmares,” Hannibal says, and he guides Will to his bed by the hips, hands digging at his jeans and tugs them down, letting them fall around his ankles.

Will finds it odd when he thinks about it too much as he’s lying on his bed with Hannibal curled up against his back. Will chuckles and voices his thought, “Who would have thought that I would be spooning with my OS?”

“You’re as much mine as I am yours,” Hannibal says, his breath against Will’s neck.

And yes, Will has to agree. Hannibal has his hooks in him.

**Author's Note:**

> In case I made it too subtle, Hannibal cannibalized Beverly and her system. Forever creepy Hannibal.
> 
> Thanks for reading, and feedback is always appreciated!


End file.
